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By Patrick QuinnAssociated Press • Tuesday August 28, 2012 7:42 AM

KABUL, Afghanistan — Insurgents beheaded 17 people at a party in a Taliban-controlled area, and
an Afghan soldier killed two U.S. troops, bringing the two-day death toll in Afghanistan to about
30 yesterday.

Almost-daily attacks by militants, plus increasingly frequent deadly violence against NATO
troops by their Afghan allies, indicate that after nearly 12 years of military intervention, the
country is not pacified. Once the United States and other countries pull out their troops, chaos
might return, and Taliban domination in large areas is plausible.

The beheadings occurred in southern Helmand province, where more than 100 insurgents attacked an
Afghan-army checkpoint and killed 10 soldiers.

Helmand was the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s surge, in which he ordered 33,000
additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to help with a military counterinsurgency plan. That plan was
intended to turn the tide in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar province and establish the
governmental institutions that would allow the Afghan government to take control of the Taliban
heartland.

Two years later, however, Helmand is so lawless that Afghan government officials couldn’t even
go to the Taliban-controlled town where the beheadings were reported. Many Afghans in the south,
the Taliban’s birthplace and the home of the country’s Pashtun-speaking population, are leery of a
government that many consider to be corrupt and ineffective.

The problem is compounded by a rapid reduction in American and international aid, which fueled
most of the growth in the south in recent years. Afghanistan, one of the world’s 10 poorest
countries, has received nearly $60 billion in civilian aid since 2002. In the next four years, it
stands to receive $16 billion, or about $4 billion a year. By comparison, the U.S. alone spent that
much in 2010.

Analysts also say that Americans, worn down by a war that began just a month after the Sept. 11,
2001, attack, no longer care as much about Afghanistan, and the war is considered by many to be
over.

“The problem with this attitude is that Afghanistan — or whatever the crisis may be — has a life
of its own,” said Sarah Chaynes, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, in a commentary published on Sunday. “Men and women keep dying, and U.S. policies keep
accelerating the centrifugal forces that are driving the country toward civil conflict, which may
have profound implications for future regional and international security.

“Choosing to ignore problems is rarely a good way to solve them,” said Chaynes, who spent nearly
a decade in Afghanistan and served as an adviser to the U.S. military.

Most of the problems are likely to surface in Helmand and the south, where most of the surge
troops will be removed as part of a drawdown that will reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan from a
peak of nearly 103,000 last year to about 68,000 in October. Other nations, including Britain, also
are drawing down in the south, and nearly all foreign military forces are to leave the country by
the end of 2014.

The forces are to be replaced by Afghan army and police units, but many observers have
questioned the effectiveness of a force that has a high desertion rate, is often poorly disciplined
and is supposed to reach a high of about 350,000 members at the end of this year.

Another growing concern is the loyalty of the Afghan troops that the U.S. has spent more than
$22 billion to train in recent years.

Insider attacks have been a problem for the U.S.-led coalition for years, but they recently have
become a crisis. At least 33 have occurred this year, killing 42 coalition members, most of them
Americans. Last year, there were 21 attacks that killed 35. In 2010, 11 attacks caused 20
deaths.

In the latest such attack, two U.S. troops were killed in eastern Laghman province. There were
conflicting reports about whether the attack was intentional.

In Washington, a Defense Department official said the Afghan soldier fired a rocket-propelled
grenade at the Americans.

In contrast, Noman Hatefi, a spokesman for the Afghan army corps in eastern Afghanistan, said a
group of U.S. and Afghan troops came under an insurgent attack. He said the two Americans were
killed when an Afghan soldier fell and accidentally discharged his weapon.

“He didn’t do this intentionally. But then the commander of the (Afghan) unit started shouting
at him, ‘What did you do? You killed two NATO soldiers!’ And so he threw down his weapon and
started to run,” Hatefi said.

The U.S. troops already had called in air support to help with the insurgent attack, and the
aircraft fired on the escaping soldier, killing him, Hatefi said.

Regarding the beheadings, a local government official said the victims were civilians at a
celebration late Sunday involving music and dancing in Helmand’s Musa Qala district. The official,
Neyamatullah Khan, said the Taliban killed the partygoers for flouting the extreme brand of Islam
embraced by the militants.